Forgetting it all for just one night!

We had a friends wedding Saturday night, it was the best time I have had in a LONG time, it did help that before we got there I decided I was going to get smashed! But that wasn't the only reason I enjoyed myself. The church was so nice, they gave a moment for private prayer which I thought was nice. I couldn't help but be sad thinking about our wedding. Four years, its seems like yesterday! But it's sad now looking back, I was so naive, but it was also probably the last day I was truly happy. I want to be happy again! Anyway, it was nice to see old friends and even nicer to see that a guy I graduated with is losing his hair!! I'm awful, God help me lol! I did get to have two drinks, before it happened. I was talking to an old friend she asked how long we had been married, I said four years. She didn't hear me so I said it will be five in June. When I heard myself say that it hit me five years! Still no children! She then asked, so are you going to have babies? Her mom quickly nudged her but the damage was done. I said yup when the time is right. I did manage to get beyond wasted and me and my husband had a great time we danced, laughed, and well enjoyed some quality time together when we got home ;o) I thought the next morning well, it was a fun night I couldn't have had that much fun if I was pg. I also wished I could put all the IF stuff behind me and just enjoy a child free life. I haven't enjoyed my Husbands company like that in years, it was so much fun and carefree! Oh to be carefree again!

I HATE MONDAYS!

This is what this Monday had to offer me.....I have a very close co-worker who is like a second mom to me. She has been there while I planned my wedding, through the tough times with my husband, and now through IF. She listens, lets me cries, lets me know when I'm being hormonal, and puts me in my place when I need it. I felt like she understood where I was coming from since she lost twins at 6 months. This is going back 30yrs when they couldn't save them. I could see and hear the pain she still feels when she talks about them 30 yrs later. She did go on to have a daughter and a son. She actually made a promise to Mother Mary that if she blessed her with a child she would name it after her, hence her daughter Mary. Like I said we have been very close and I attended her daughters wedding 3 yrs ago, I had just gotten my first BFP a few weeks before that and can remember dancing at the wedding and she asked, how do you feel? Wonderful I answered! The next day I started to bleed and lost the pg two week later. We talked about Mary having a baby, but it was always no she's not ready yet. I was relieved by this and felt like I didn't have to race against the clock hoping to get pg before her so I didn't have to deal with the painful announcement. But I was also anxious knowing that one day it was going to happen. Last October she told be they were going to start trying, right away my stomach dropped and I panicked knowing the reality of the situation. At this time I talked to her and told her that as hard as it might be for me to hear or for her to tell me she had to tell me when it happened. I also told her that I am going to be so happy for her, but so sad for me. She understood and we both actually cried at the thought of that day. OK, so for the past two weeks I have had a gut feeling that Mary was pg. I had not evidence and nothing to go off of but something told me it was about to happen. I ignored it for a week or so, but Monday I couldn't take it anymore, I couldn't take waiting for the bomb to drop. I asked another a co-worker who is actually her BFF. She nearly dropped her water and said, uh uh uh, yeah she is. I lost it right there. She then said that Kathy had been wrestling with how to tell me and was having an equally hard time with this (doubtful). I then went out and to Kathy and said I need to talk, of course I was crying and she was franticly asking whats wrong?! I finally got the words out, I know. She started crying and we hugged. I felt relieved the anxiety of this day coming was gone, but I was devastated at the same time, surprisingly not because her daughter was pg but because I felt like I just lost a friend, my second mom. She was my safe friend she knew how it felt to lose a pg, and she was not going to announce she was pg anytime soon lol she's almost 60! But now I feel like I can't talk to her anymore, I feel like she won't understand anymore. My husband says to give it time and things will get less weird, but I'm afraid they might not. What if they don't? I was prepared to be devastated over the pg news but never thought I would feel like this. I couldn't go to work on Tuesday just to much to deal with, but then today if was like we both avoided each other. I'm so sad to have lost yet another friend to IF. She said one thing that really struck me and she was so right, I said Kathy its just so hard, she said I know, I can only imagine its so hard for me, I don't want to hurt you I love you, but at the end of the day I still get to be a grandma. I wasn't mad, but I was thinking and I felt bad that it was hard for her to tell me, but she was right she can be relieved that it was out and now just get to be excited. GOD I HATE THIS!!!! I want her to be happy but when is it going to be my turn? When do I get to be happy?

I know how IF effects me, but my husband?

I know that IF has taken a toll on me physically and emotionally, I know how much it hurts. But how does it effect my husband? I watched Oprah yesterday and it was about men who are having affairs. The Dr. she had on said that the average couple talks for twelve minutes a day, twelve minutes!!! I thought about us and I can believe that, we have dinner in front of the t.v. we both open our lap tops and maybe say a few words through out the night. It's sad I miss the old us, the fun us! The Dr. also pointed out that if you talked about what you talk about now when you were dating you would have never gotten married. How true is that? How many of us talk about finances, work, the home improvements, IF?? I know this is true for us, we get twelve minutes a day and ten of them are about IF. Two of them are about our finances. I pointed this out to my husband tonight I also added that when I bring up IF it seems like he shuts down and stops listening, believe me I wish I didn't have to talk about it either there are a lot of other things I would rather talk about, but it consumes me. I'm tired of hearing myself talk about it I can only imagine what he's thinking. But he gets to escape it, it's not there in the morning when he gets up, he doesn't fall asleep thinking about it, he goes to work and goes on with his day. So tonight when I brought it up he finally told me how he felt. He said he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. He knows that after about five minutes of me talking about it I am going to to get depressed, and possibly start crying. He is also afraid that he is going to say the wrong thing and upset me more. If he sits and says nothing then I think he doesn't care. He said he doesn't know what to do or say. He wishes he could make it better but he can't. I know this effects him but hearing him say this tonight my heart just broke. I put myself in his shoes and thought, what if there was something he was going through that I could not help him with. Something that was slowly killing his spirit, watching him go through painful procedures, taking shots, falling apart at the drop of a hat. What would you do? I love my husband and he loves me more then words can even express, he would be ok not having children. We had lots of heated discussions about this before we got married. After our second miscarriage I remember him saying to me, I love you Tara and I want you to be happy. So we will continue doing this until you want to stop, but you are all I care about. I can't imagine how painful it must be for him to watch me go through this, all the while losing a little more of his wife with each loss. Losing the women he fell in love with, watching her suffer slowly, and not being able to do a thing to make it better. He tells me all the time, "I just want you to be happy" I want to be happy too! I want us to be happy, sometimes I wish I could throw my hands up and say well we tried it didn't work oh well lets just move on with our lives and just enjoy loving each other. But I can't, I can't live a life without children, its just not an option for me. I love this man, and if I am willing to fight this hard to have his baby, I can fight this hard to find the old us, to find some sort of happiness!

I don't want to be this person

I hate what Infertility has done to me as a person. The sick feeling I get when I think a friend, co-worker, or family member may be pregnant. The anxiety I feel when people talk about starting a family, "what if they get pregnant before me?" I hate that I can't be happy for a couple when they announce their pregnancy. I hate the jealousy I feel, but more then that I hate the sadness that fills me, knowing I am so far from feeling the happiness they are feeling. I don't want people to hesitate to share their exciting news with me, I am glad that they are concerned and don't want to hurt me but I also don't want to be kept in a bubble. I wish I could stop judging people who get pregnant easily like, the unmarried coworker who rents a one bedroom apartment was recently laid off from her job, and decided to be induced two weeks before her due date because "she is done being pregnant". My Husband should be able to share that his good friend from high school is having a baby without me breaking into tears. Recently a child in my Pre-K class shared the news that her mommy was going to have a baby, I tried to be excited for her and smiled as she talked about how she was going to be a big sister. But later as she sat next to me coloring a picture for her new baby she said, "Miss Tara, everyone can have a baby, lots of babies!" What do I say to that? "No ___ not everyone can have babies?" I of course did not say that, but it took everything I had to not breakdown right there at the table. I also wonder will I ever get over this even once I'm pregnant? Am I going to think, "well you didn't have to go through everything I went through to get pregnant." I was never like this, I can remember being truly happy for women when they announced their news, I wanted to know all the details, I threw a friend a baby shower and bought her every pink item they had in the store! Like infertility isn't hard enough but now we have the anger, the bitterness, the resentment, and the guilt for feeling this way.

New to all this

So I finally decided to give blogging a shot. I have been having a really hard time staying positive lately, so if nothing else I hope this will give me a place to get my thoughts out and sort through all these emotions. I wish I would have started this three years ago when we first started this crazy IF journey. I think back at how naive I was at the time, why would I need to create a whole blog about infertility, I'm going to get pg in my first cycle! Who knew? But it would have been nice to look back and remember those feelings I had when we first started all this, like the excitement I felt with our first positive beta.

That memory is so painful for me now, I can remember it like it was yesterday. Getting that phone call at work from the nurse, "Mrs. Ryan? We have your results and your beta came back positive! See wasn't that easy?" I floated all the way home, I thought wow its really happening I'm going to have a baby, I cried, I thanked God, I felt amazing. Now I had to focus on surprising my husband with the news! I had planned a surprise one night cruise, not knowing that I would be surprising him with this great news also. When we got on the ship I told him to go make our dinner reservations, I went to the room and blew up 10 pink balloons, and 10 blue balloons, I hung baby cutouts on the cabin wall. When he came into the room his face was the cutest. I just remember hugging and thinking this is it we're going to be a family now. We talked about it all night made plans for the future, talked about taking them to Disney.
I wish I could get that excitement back now. Unfortunately I now know the reality of all this. Now I am just filled with these painful memories. The memory of spotting, and being on bed rest for a week, hoping, and praying that everything would be ok. The memory of the excruciating pain in my lower back as I tried to Christmas shop. The memory of sitting in the waiting room, holding my husbands hand, wondering if when we looked at the ultrasound we were going to see a heartbeat. The memory of hearing the dreadful words come from the Dr. "I'm sorry there is no heartbeat". The memory of my husband talking to my belly the night before the d&c, he thought I was asleep, but I listened as he said goodbye to our first baby.
That was almost three years ago but the pain and heartache are still there, It feels like yesterday. I thought that with each miscarriage it would get easier, but it hasn't, it hurts just as much every time. I have on the other hand become numb to the excitement of getting a positive beta, I will not allow myself to get excited, or to be that naive. Not until that baby is in my arms, not until our child has taken its first breath.